LOS ANGELES—Workers at dozens of major hotels in Southern California went on strike July 2, forming picket lines at many of the businesses in an effort to secure higher pay and improvements in health care and retirement benefits.

“BREAKING: Southern California hotel workers are ON STRIKE! Thousands walked off the job at properties across DTLA & Santa Monica. Dozens more properties remain without a Union contract,” Unite Here Local 11 wrote on Twitter at 6:01 a.m. Sunday.

That tweet was followed by several more that showed workers picketing Sunday morning at sites including the InterContinental in downtown Los Angeles, JW Marriott LA Live, Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Hotel Figueroa, Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica, Viceroy Santa Monica, Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, Sheraton Universal Hotel, and DoubleTree Los Angeles.

The union, which represents up to 15,000 workers employed at 65 major hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties, had said June 30 in an Instagram post that its members “could strike at any moment” during the Fourth of July weekend.

The contract between the hotels and Unite Here Local 11 expired at 12:01 a.m. Saturday although the union reached a deal Wednesday night with the largest of its employers, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in downtown L.A.

Contract agreements are unresolved with the remaining hotels.

Hotel officials have told reporters their facilities will remain open with management and other nonunion staff filling in if the union strike materializes.

The workers include thousands of cooks, room attendants, dishwashers, servers, bellhops, and front desk agents.

On June 8, 96 percent of the union’s members approved a strike authorization that could result in one of the nation’s largest hotel worker strikes.

Union officials said their members earn $20 to $25 an hour. Negotiators are asking for an immediate $5 an hour raise and an additional $3 an hour in subsequent years of the contract along with improvements in health care and retirement benefits.

The union is also seeking to create a hospitality workforce housing fund. Officials said a survey showed that 53 percent of workers said they either have moved in the past five years or will move in the near future because of soaring housing costs, with many saying they’re now commuting hours from areas like Apple Valley, Palmdale, California City, and Victorville.

“Our members were devastated first by the pandemic, and now by the greed of their bosses,” Unite Here Local 11 Co-President Kurt Petersen said in a statement put out by the union. “The industry got bailouts while we got cuts. Now, the hotel negotiators decided to take a four-day holiday instead of negotiating. Shameful.”

With the Westin contract settled, the Coordinated Bargaining Group is negotiating on behalf of 44 of the other unionized hotels. The remaining 21 hotels would adhere to that same agreement.

Representatives for the hotels accused workers of being inflexible in their demands.

The union “has not budged from its opening demand two months ago of up to a 40 percent wage increase and an over 28 percent increase in benefit costs. From the outset, the union has shown no desire to engage in productive, good faith negotiations with this group,” the reps said in a statement provided to the Los Angeles Times.

Attorney Keith Grossman of Hirschfeld Kraemer, one of two firms representing the hotel coalition, told the Los Angeles Times that employers have offered raises of $2.50 an hour in the first 12 months and $6.25 over four years. He said housekeepers at unionized hotels in Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles, who currently make $25 per hour, would get a 10 percent wage increase in 2024 and make more than $31 per hour by January 2027.

“If there is a strike, it will occur because the union is determined to have one,” Grossman said.